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ART. VI. Captivité de La Fayette. Heroide. The Captivity of La Fayette, an Heroid. With Plates, and historical Notes, containing Particulars hitherto unknown. By CHARLES D'AGRAIN. 4to. pp. 60. Paris, 1797. London, De Boffe.

THE

THE last Heroids which we had occasion to notice (vol. xvi. N.S. p. 166) were of a different character from the present those were distinguished for smooth numbers, comic archness, and entertaining wit; this poem is marked by harsh versification, manly sentiment, and attempted pathos. The poet could not easily have selected a finer subject for the Heroic Muse, than Fayette tracing in the dungeons of Olmutz an epistle to that most admirable of women, whom Providence, in atonement for the adversities which awaited him, bestowed on him for a wife. It would be unjust not to admit that much effect is produced on the reader, by the description of this situation in the poem before us; which is announced as the first effort of a young versifier. We cannot better indicate the force of his talent than by an extract:

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Jadis plus heureux, l'un & l'autre hémisphère
Me comblaient à l'envi d'honneurs de pouvoir.
Tant que j'ai commandé, j'ai rempli mon devoir.
Dans la ville, en les camps, ma présence chérie,
Des feux de la discorde étouffait la furie,
Protégeait l'innocent, l'arrachait au trépas;
Les cœurs volaient en foule au devant de mes pas
Si depuis mon exil, le peuple eût des allarmes,
On n'ouit pas mon nom se mêler dans ses larmes.
La Fayette dès-lors, sous le joug abattu,
De son patriotisme expiait la vertu.
De modération et victime et modèle,

Au loi, à mon pays, à mon serment fidèle....
Ah! voilà le grand coup sous lequel j'ai plié,
Je meurs pour ma patrie, et j'en suis oublié.
Sur quel espoir faut-il que la vertu se fonde? ....
Liberté! que me sert qu'aux champs du nouveau monde,
Tu couronnas mon front d'un laurier triomphal ?
Hélas! le nouveau monde et mon pays natal,
Insoucieux du bras qui rompit leurs entraves,
Laissent chez l'étranger leurs défenseurs esclaves....
Le ciel méme, le ciel me laisse sans appui...
En vain ma faible voix s'élève jusqu'à lui.'

The copious notes annexed to this poem were scarcely necessary to explain its allusions: but the reader will observe among them, with interest, some original letters interchanged with the celebrated sufferer.

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ART. VII. Histoire de la Revolution de France, &c. i.e. A History
By Two Friends to Liberty.

of the Revolution in France.

PP: 400. in each Vol.

Vols. VI. VII. VIII. and IX. 8vo.
Paris. 1797. London, imported by De Boffe.

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HE first five volumes of this work were concisely noticed TH in the Appendix to our Review, vol. viii. p. 548, They were commended for a certain moderation of opinion, hostile alike to arbitrary government and to licentious disobedience, and studiously accommodated to the recent institutions of the French. This constitutional orthodoxy, this deference for the form of government decreed in 1791, also pervades the 6th and 7th volumes; which complete a very candid, fair, and detailed account of the proceedings of the States-General, then, and still with propriety called the Constituting Assembly.

The eighth and ninth volumes relate exclusively to the se cond parliament, or Legislative Assembly of the French, It had not been long met ere a very marked difference of opinion appeared among the friends of liberty. Both parties, indeed, professed allegiance to the constitution: but the one thought it desirable to strengthen the constitutional king by an increase of influence, and the constitutional church by a reconciliation with Rome; while the other exalted the privileges of popular representatives, and proclaimed their indifference to religious establishments. The Tory-party were at that time called Feuillans, and the Whig-party Jacobins the former had the ear of the king, and the latter a majority in the legislature. Narbonne was a minister agreeable to the Jacobins: the king dismissed him; and the assembly voted that he carried with him their regret. The king persevered in surrounding himself with ministers favourable to prerogative. Other cases of collision occurred. The majority of the assembly voted various laws of emergency, to which the king applied his suspensive veto, thus rendering them wholly inefficacious. La Fayette and his party acted with the Jacobins in the affair of Narbonne, but afterward joined the Feuillans. As soon as a regular hostility was begun between the representative body and the crown, it would have been proper to appeal to the people; that is, to dissolve the parliament: but the improvident constitution-makers had no where vested such a power; and the appeal to the people took place not in their capacity of constituents, but of individuals. Clubs were instituted, arms distributed, and the populace of Paris were conducted by their very magistrates to the palace to threaten the sovereign. The intimidated court increased its connections with Coblentz and with the foreign enemy, deJayed to dismiss its Swiss guard, in defiance of a decree of the Assembly;

Assembly; paralyzed by its veto the attempts to encamp a parliamentary army near Paris; took steps to remove its own residence; and at length provoked the fatal tenth of August. The authors of these volumes place all these events in a lightfavorable to the views of a Feuillan, and describe the whole conduct of the Jacobin party as a systematic encroachment on the constitution: whereas it seems but too plain that, had the king been more ductile, had he thrown himself on the stronger of the two parties, instead of preferring that which flattered him with most appearance of power,-had he, in short, becn the king of the majority of his people, he would have found many of the republican zealots advocates of his office and props of his authority. It was the despair of his friendship which decided their enmity.

The Girondists are described in these volumes as so little inimical to the constitution, that they are represented (vol. ix. p. 208.) even after the king's death, as endeavouring to effect the re-establishment of the constitutional royalty in the person of the prince royal; in whose name, and during whose minority, they hoped to govern with little restraint.

As we before observed, these authors are too sparing of dates, and sometimes too minute in their details: but they are well informed, and they inculcate a love of order and. subordination, and a temperate pursuit of civil liberty.

ART. VIII. Annales de Chimie, &c. i. e. Chemical Annals, or a Collection of Memoirs concerning Chemistry, and the Arts dependant on that Science. By Citizens GUYTON, MONGE, BERTHOLLET, FOUR CROY, ABET, SEGUIN, VAUQUELIN, PELLE TIER, C. A. PRIEUR, CHAPTAL, and VAN MONS. Vol. XXI, XXII. 8vo. Paris. 1797. Imported by De Boffe, London. HE arrangement of this most valuable repository is well known, and its interruption in 1793 was lamented through Europe. How much reason men of science have to congra tulate themselves on its resumption will be manifest, from the concise view which we shall immediately present of the seven numbers that have reached us t.

TH

M. GUYTON, formerly so well known as M. DE MORVEAU, opens the collection with a long and valuable paper on a gravimeter of his own invention. It is constructed on Fahrenheit's principles, with the aid of Nicholson's improvement, The paper should be read with the plate.

On Wool-Soap, and its Use in the Arts. By J. A. CHAPTAL. The process for making this soap consists simply in boiling woollen rags in caustic lye. Its use in fulling is represented

* We understand that M. PELLETIER is lately dead, Vol. xx. also is just come to hand.

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as very great. The writer asserts that cottons treated three times, by means of this soap, are as well prepared for the dyer as by being seven times passed through the usual soapy liquors.

On a Disease among Trees which particularly affects the Mountain Ash, and is analogous to Ulceration. By M. VAUQUELIN. The discharge from the ulcers is sometimes colourless; in which case the bark becomes white like lime-stone, acquires an alkaline taste, and loses its fibrous organization. It yields the carbonates of potash, lime, and magnesia: the former in such quantity, that less than five ounces of diseased bark yield as much as 50 pounds of healthy bark on incineration. There are cafes, in which the discharge from the ulcer is darkcoloured, and consists of a peculiar vegetable substance (in some respects like gum) and vegetable alkali.

The Abstract of a Memoir by a Society of Chemists in Holland is highly interesting. These Chemists, by treating ether and alcohol in three different ways, obtained three varieties of hydrocarbonate air. The first is generated from the mixture of 75 parts of sulphuric acid with 25 of alcohol, or from ether or alcohol passed through a heated tube, containing clay or flint *, This species has a most remarkable property:-when mixed with oxygenated marine açid, it produces an etherial oil: hence they have denominated it oil-making, olefiant. The second species is made by transmitting the vapour of ether through a heated glass tube, and the third by transmitting those of alcohol.-These three gasses differ only in the proportion of their ingredients, hydrogen and carbone: the first containing most carbone.

These experiments lead to the artificial production of oil. The French chemists think that this may be advantageously done by producing the oil-making gas from highly carbonated mineral substances, as certain kinds of steel.

On the Hyacinth of France. By M. GUYTON.-M. Klaproth having discovered the new earth of the jargon in the oriental hyacinth, M. GUYTON was induced to seek it in the hyacinth of France. His search was successful, and the scientific reader will with pleasure compare the analyses of these two great chemists; for M. GUYTON, though he confirms M. Klaproth's principal observations, by no means follows his processes with a spirit of servile imitation.

The Analysis of the Peridot, by M. VAUQUELIN, affords the

The French reporter observes that the production of species the first depends simply on a lower temperature, not on the contents of the tube.

remarkable

remarkable example of a substance classed among the gems, and yet containing above half of its weight of magnesia.

Extract of a Memoir on the Strontian Earth. By R. PELLETIER.-The difference between this earth and barytes was before well established: but it may be useful to inform our readers that the author gives three instances of horses that died suddenly, after having taken muriate and carbonate of barytes for the farcy (farcin).

The two next articles are translations from M. Klaproth, whose second volume of Contributions is published, and shall in due time be noticed.

Combustion of Phosphorus in the Vacuum of the Air-Pump. By M. VAN MARUM.-Phosphorus took fire in the exhausted receiver, when the temperature of the air was 56. M. VAN M. found it necessary to lay the phosphorus on a slow conductor of heat, as cotton. He thinks that the phosphoric vapours, being too heavy to rise, accumulate round the body of phosphorus, and excite heat enough for its inflammation. He actually saw a thermometer, in contact with a piece of phosphorus in the receiver, raised to 76. This, however, being much below the degree necessary to fire this inflammable substance in the atmosphere, we suspect that there is a degree of pressure (as there is a proportion of oxygen and azote) more favourable, than that which commonly prevails, to the combustion of phosphorus.

From M. MARGUERON'S Memoir on Volatile Oils, it appears that the concretions, which they deposit from cold, approach more to the nature of flowers of benjamin than camphor.

In our Appendix to vol. xxi. p. 530. we gave an account of M. M. Göttling's, Scherer's, and Jacger's experiments on phosphorus. We find them examined at length in the next article by M. M. FOURCROY and VAUQUELIN, who relate a great number of new and beautiful experiments with gasses, holding phosphorus in solution. It is particularly remarkable that oxygene air exposed to phosphorus, becomes luminous (though not so before) as soon as azote is added to it. The authors endeavour to shew that this addition is equivalent to the addition of caloric:-but they do not seem at last to acquiesce in their explanation; and to us it appears exceedingly lame.

A Memoir on Respiration and Animal Heat, read in 1790 to the Society of Medicine, by A. SEGUIN, contains ideas now hackneyed.

On Detonations from Percussion. By M. M. FOURCROY and VAUQUELIN. This paper is of some standing, and has not much novelty. It enumerates various mixtures of combustibles

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with

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